Great Orme Mine Ancient Mine / Quarry View all content for Great Orme Mine

This place blew me away (how many time have I said that in the past? This time I really mean it!). I had wanted to visit for years but everytime we planned a Welsh trip, we ended up changing our minds and heading to Scotland instead. So, I finally found myself here, almost by accident, having cut short a weekend/Hallowe'en trip to Chester. We arrived on the last day it was open for the season - it was quiet and almost deserted but the staff were more than happy to talk to us at length about the excavations and history of the site. We had a nosey round the finds in the little "interactive" room before getting our hard-hats on and setting off into the mines. I was completely gob-smacked by the enormity of it all - each "corrider" we walked down had been mined out by hand (and bone) thousands of years ago, it is just mind-boggling. I am so used to seeing ancient monuments which have been built, mainly for reasons we can not begin to explain but here was real industry; a glimpse into the daily lives of our ancestors. Bloody incredible.

Posted by Vicster 18th November 2008ce

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